As we've moved into Daylight Savings Time, the weeknight group rides have started around the area. In years past, I've tried to ride when I can with the Griffin ride group which has a number of strong riders and good folks all around. The problem has been that they meet on Thursdays which is in conflict with some of my other activities. So this year I've decided to go down to Macon and ride with the group there.
In the past I've avoided this because it's farther away from me and the group has been smaller and dominated by triathletes. I don't mind tri guys but they tend to be a little sketchy in their bike handling skills and they all seem to want to ride in thei aero bars, even when in a group. Well, Rick at Bike Tech told me the group has gotten bigger and that the pace was definitely higher. He called it "The Pain Train" and so last week I decided to head down and check it out.
The group was definitely bigger at about 40 riders and there were a couple of Cat 2's and 3's in attendance. That makes the Cat 4 guys like me have to ride harder which is good for training. The ride starts with a short warm-up that almost immediately turns into a series of big rollers. The middle roller is the selector where the group splits and the strong guys ride away from the guys who are less fit or who are taking the day easy. After the rollers there's a bit of descending and then a turn onto a "shake-n-bake" section of torn up asphalt with a couple of long 4% climbs that sap the legs. Then it's a couple of more turns and some flat that leads to the long time trial section of low rollers and long flats. Finally there's a couple of longish climbs ended with a medium long really hard climb. All in all, it's a great course to practice intervals, either uphill or in sprinting away from the fast group.
Last week I was really on form and rode super hard. At one point, one of the guys who didn't know me sort of glared at me after I had finished taking a monster pull on the front. He asked me my name and then asked, "Where the hell did you come from?" That's always a good sign in a group when the strong guys look like you've made 'em suffer. Instant respect, especially if you spend a lot of time on the front like I do. This week I wasn't as strong since it's a recovery week and I didn't ride Saturday or Monday. The one awesome thing was that I got caught behind a split in the lead group after I had taken a big pull. The six guys on the front weren't really interested in waiting up and tried to see if they could get away. I wasn't interested in getting dropped less than halfway into the ride. So I put my head down and went into time trial mode. I hooked up with a couple of other guys that had tailed off and I started to peg the break back. The entire time I was totally on the rivet and felt like I was going to add a bit of color to the countryside for a time. After stablizing the gap I let the other guys pull for a bit until I caught me breath (i.e.-got back down to my lactate threshold) and then I went tot he front again. I halved the distance to the break and then let the others pull for a bit again. Finally, I went to the front and put in one more big effort and I was back on and integrated in to a double paceline just as we hit the low roller/TT section. We flew over the next ten miles at an average of about 28 mph sharing the workload between us. I paid for my efforts later in the last section of hills but it was an excellent ride never-the-less. I'm looking forward to riding with the group thoughout the summer.
Thanks for reading.
